MisterWhat UK Business Directory Scraper

Scrape MisterWhat (misterwhat.co.uk) — a UK-wide business directory covering restaurants, tradespeople, professional services, shops, and more across every English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish city and town. Search any business category in any UK city and get names, addresses, ratings, and review counts instantly, or turn on full-profile fetching for phone numbers, websites, price range, and customer reviews. No login, no cookies, no API key required.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (category + city) and byUrl (direct business profile URLs)
• 50+ curated categories to pick from, or type any custom category
• 50+ curated UK cities to pick from, or type any custom city/town
• Filter by minimum star rating (1-5) or "has at least one rating"
• Rich business profiles — phone number, website, full category list, price range, and customer reviews
• Empty fields are omitted — you only ever see fields that were actually found for a business

Output per business

• name — business name
• category — the business's primary listed category (when profile fetched)
• categories[] — every category the business is listed under (when profile fetched)
• rating, reviewCount — average star rating (1-5) and number of reviews
• street, city, postalCode, country, address — full postal address
• region — the wider UK region/county the business is listed under (when profile fetched)
• latitude, longitude — map coordinates of the business (when profile fetched)
• phone, website — contact details (when profile fetched)
• priceRange — relative price indicator (e.g. $, $$) when the business publishes one (when profile fetched)
• description — the business's own free-text description, when it has written one (when profile fetched)
• isVerified — true if MisterWhat has verified the listing, false otherwise (when profile fetched)
• imageUrl — business photo, when the business has uploaded a real photo (generic placeholder icons are never included)
• reviews[] — customer reviews (author, date, rating, text) when profile fetched and reviews exist
• profileUrl — canonical MisterWhat profile URL for the business
• companyId — MisterWhat's internal business ID
• recordType: "business", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search (category + city) or byUrl (fetch by URL)
category	string (select)	restaurants	Pick a common category, or custom to use customCategory (mode=search)
customCategory	string	–	Any free-text category, overrides category (mode=search)
city	string (select)	london	Pick a common UK city, or use customCity for any other town (mode=search)
customCity	string	–	Any free-text UK city, town, or postcode area, overrides city (mode=search)
ratedOnly	boolean	false	Only return businesses that have at least one rating (ignored when minRating is set)
minRating	string (select)	– (no minimum)	Only return businesses rated at least 1-5 stars
fetchDetails	boolean	true	Also visit each business's profile page for phone, website, categories, price range, and reviews (slower but richer)
profileUrls	array	–	MisterWhat profile URLs to fetch directly (mode=byUrl)
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on returned records (1-1000)
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify AUTO proxy	MisterWhat works without a proxy; the free AUTO datacenter group is used automatically as a fallback if a request is ever blocked

Example: search restaurants in London

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "restaurants",
  "city": "london",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: highest-rated plumbers in Manchester, with full profiles

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "plumbers",
  "city": "manchester",
  "fetchDetails": true,
  "ratedOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: custom category and town not in the curated lists

{
  "mode": "search",
  "customCategory": "wedding photographers",
  "customCity": "Harrogate",
  "maxItems": 40
}

Example: 4+ star solicitors in Birmingham

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "solicitors",
  "city": "birmingham",
  "minRating": "4",
  "fetchDetails": true,
  "maxItems": 40
}

Example: fetch specific business profiles

{
  "mode": "byUrl",
  "profileUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.misterwhat.co.uk/company/98196-leon-restaurants-london" }
  ]
}

Use cases

• Local lead generation — build a prospect list of UK businesses by trade and city for B2B outreach
• Market research — measure business density and average ratings for a category across UK cities
• Directory aggregation — feed structured UK business data into your own local-search product
• Competitor mapping — see who else operates in a category and area, with ratings and contact info
• Franchise & site-selection analysis — evaluate service-business coverage across UK towns

FAQ

What data source does this actor use? It reads the publicly available search and business-profile pages on misterwhat.co.uk, a UK business directory. No account or API key is needed.

Is this affiliated with MisterWhat? No. This is an independent, third-party actor that reads publicly accessible pages.

Why do some businesses have no rating, phone, or website? MisterWhat only shows a rating once a business has received at least one review, and only shows contact details a business itself provided. Fields with no data are simply omitted from the record rather than shown as empty or null.

What does isVerified mean? It reflects MisterWhat's own "Verified Listing" badge, shown on business profiles the platform has verified. It's false (not omitted) for unverified listings, since "not verified" is itself meaningful signal — only available with fetchDetails: true (mode=search) or in byUrl mode.

What's the difference between category and categories? categories lists every category the business is registered under on its profile page (e.g. a restaurant might be listed as "Bistro", "Mediterranean Restaurant", and "Restaurant"). category is simply the first of those. Both are only populated with fetchDetails: true (mode=search) or always in byUrl mode.

Can I search by town or area not in the curated city list? Yes — use customCity with any UK city, town, or postcode area name.

Why is imageUrl sometimes missing? MisterWhat only shows a business photo when the business (or a user) has actually uploaded one. Businesses without a real photo show the site's generic placeholder icon instead — this actor deliberately excludes that placeholder so imageUrl only ever contains genuine photos.

Why is fetchDetails on by default? It's the only way to get phone numbers, websites, price range, and reviews — the search-results page itself only shows name, address, and (sometimes) rating. Turn it off for a faster, listing-only scrape when you just need names and addresses.

How does minRating differ from ratedOnly? ratedOnly returns any business with at least one review (any star rating). minRating is stricter — it only returns businesses rated at least the chosen number of stars. Set minRating when you need a quality bar, not just "has reviews".

What happens if a category or city has very few results? The actor stops paging as soon as MisterWhat returns a results page with no listings, so you'll simply receive however many genuine matches exist — never fabricated or padded results.

Why do only a small fraction of businesses have a rating? MisterWhat only shows a rating once a real customer has left a review, and most listed businesses haven't received one yet. This is a genuine characteristic of the data source, not a bug — use ratedOnly: true or minRating to focus specifically on reviewed businesses.

Some city names (e.g. "Leeds") match more than one UK location — how is that handled? MisterWhat automatically resolves this by following the location with by far the most listings (e.g. "Leeds, Yorkshire and the Humber" over a same-named hamlet elsewhere in the UK), so you always get results instead of an empty page.